Readers' comments

South America and the so called 'Americans' have the incurable 'TWA Syndrome', but they still believe that they're flying PAN AM. A stay at the Surf Club in Montauk, NY., yielded a deadly tropical spider attack from a couple of South Americans, with the male of a north african heritage, who could not sit down to dinner, can not eat, only imbibe and are as loud and rabid as slum dogs.

Great piece! Regardless of what you think about the programs Snowden uncovered, you must keep in mind that the Latin American officials that have showed so much indignation are hypocrites. They are only seeking political gain, as The Economist seems to suggest.

The Economist mischievously pretends to confuse Evo Morales abuse with the Snowden case. The indignation from Mercosur, and other Latin American countries is due to the unlawful abuse to which Bolivia’s president has been subject.

The retirement of ambassadors is due to Morales maltreatment, not due to Snowden.

Morales abuse breaks any guarantee from Vienna convention necessary to conduct diplomatic relationships. After the poor excuses thrown by European countries and the explicit statement by Margallo that Spain didn’t anything wrong, and would not give apologies, the message from Europe is:

-That Europe doesn’t give basic diplomatic guarantees.
-That didn’t recognize that Vienna Convention was violated, so Europe is willing to repeat such behavior.
-That Europe pretends that the possible presence of Snowden on the plane justified the violation of Vienna Convention. The right to asylum is a Universal Human Right. Is a right to ask, and to give asylum. So the argument only worsens the offenders’ case. But even if it were not a Human Right, recognized by all the involved nations, anyways Bolivia’s presidential plane is Bolivian territory, with full diplomatic immunity, no matter who is on board, and it can’t be subject to inspections.
-That Europe not only doesn’t recognize wrongdoings, but is willing to pile extra offenses.

All that means that is no more possible to sustain diplomatic relationships. That’s the concern of South American nations, not Snowden.

This is not the first abuse on recent times. The Argentine frigate “Libertad” was also unlawfully detained months ago, in violation of his diplomatic immunity, after pressures from USA citizens. Argentine diplomatic immunity has being disputed recently on many places around USA and Europe.

Apparently USA and Europe pretend to impose a “new normal” on which Latin American countries doesn’t have basic national rights, no diplomatic guarantees, and can be freely abused. That’s the case for colonialism, not a vacuous rhetoric.

You do have a point about European governments being above any doubts wrt respect of treaties and respect towards representatives of other nations.
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Still, I personally do not take so much issue with this incident since Latin American governments and public administrations generally do not have the interests of their electorate (=their employers) as a top priority. The day they truly start to govern for the people, they will become legitimate representatives deserving full respect and protection under the Vienna treaty.
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One other thing that should be adjusted is that Europeans should stop being hypocrites and put Farc-terrorists, similar Latin American terror scum, their sponsors and apologists in Europe in jail. Until that happens, they have little authority to request the extradition of the Cesare Battistis from Brazil...

FARC is not more terror scum than European and North American governments plundering countries in the Middle East and supporting the last aparthied state on Earth.
France, England and the American Empire needs to abandon their agressive foreign policy. Therefore any comparison that takes South American countries down to the level of violent European regimes is absurd.

Unfortunately, major issue is being already sidelined. It's not a problem that government of US is spying on other governments. That's what governments have been doing all time long, hell, why are we kidding ourselves - in every country we have secret service exactly for that purpose! There is no friendship in international relations, only interests.

But, it's absolutely not admissible for government to spy on his own citizens or and that is even worse, to help foreign government to spy on his own citizens.

But, interestingly, it seems to me, that the former issue is getting much greater attention then the latter - even from respectable media.

The arguments of this article are a bit faulty from my perspective. Although true that Latin American countries' sympathy for Snowden's case does not owe much "to a genuine passion for freedom of expression or objection to state surveillance", it is not only explain by anti-Americanism. There is a underlying rejection of the use of espionage in the international arena, especially taking into account that many Latin American countries have deep economic relations with the USA. This case raises questions, for instance, whether espionage is used for free trade agreement and other negotiations that benefit the USA at expenses of Latin American wealth. The debate in Latin American is certainly different from the one taking place in Germany, where the major concern is bout personal data and privacy.

"As for Bolivia, according to Valor Econômico, Brazil’s financial daily, in October officials from Mr Morales’s government detained and searched a plane used by Brazil’s defence minister, Celso Amorim. "

I would expect the economist to understand the difference between the president of a sovereign country, who always has diplomatic immunity, and a defense minister who may have immunity only under certain circumstances.

If you don't know the difference, that says one thing. If you do know the difference but assume that your readers are to illiterate to understand it, that says something else.

South America will continue fighting for freedom and South-South integration. We have little to envy the northern Empires because morally we have left the White House and its European collaborators behind.
South America is upping the ante when it comes to human rights.

Have we? I guess that is why elections are rigged in Venezuela, journalist can go to prison for expression "opinion" in Ecuador, Argentinians have little access to foreign exchange, and Brazil is spending more in the world cup than its 3 predecessors combined.

We are not leaving the White House and Europe behind. We are walking in a different direction.

Meanwhile, Kirchner is building a proto-fascist surveillance system in "her" country (to make sure it stays hers). While the US digital surveillance is an absolute outrage than any true friend of democracy abhors, it smacks of extreme hypocracy when Kirchner complains while building up both digital, and what is worse, biometric databases and surveillance options. The digital surveillance is bad enough, but once the proto-fascists go biometric, thereis literally no privacy left. And when there is no privacy, there is no democracy, just an elite being able to subdue the masses indefinitely. And this is a system what Kirchner is rapidly building in Argentina. I'd say the prime candidates in the world to be able to design the perfect neo-authopritarian/fascist regime are China, Russia and Argentina. The US,while strong forces certainly would love to move in that direction, is (thankfully) held back somewhat by the Constitution (as trampled upon by the regime as it is, it still exists).

No 4 lines statement could be further away from the truth...
There is no such thing as South-South integration by any stretch of the imagination; ALBA, Mercosur, so called Bolivarism, South Pacific Alliance, all go in opposite directions, and have has only divided south American countries and served to push ultra-protectionism against each other, not to mention bloat the ego of some megalomaniacs. The comment on human rights in South America clearly is meant as a joke.
Out of spite, some can say they have nothing to envy to "northern empires", but South America has yet to come up with a model of its own that is remotely enviable, and for this South America will have to start to think contructively, not just destructively anti-north. While you keep at this thinking your government is robbing you blind.

Your comment smacks of a tradition of arrogance towards the Third World. We don't have nukes, our countries are small and poor but we do have a critical view of world systems that, at least in Europe, is in route to extintion.

South-South integration is not just a slogan it is the road envisionaged by Raúl Prebisch to overcome dependency after learning from the ISI years experiment.

This kind of statement is just plain silly and belongs to the 1970s leftist ideological cesspool that favored Farc-Terrorists and similar aberrations.
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You should be ashamed of using idiotic buzzwords and definitions that are outdated by 40 years.
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Other commenters have thoroughly obliterated your statements. Sometimes it's better to remain silent - that may be the reason why we've been given two ears and only one mouth - maybe your ears aren't functioning or there's a big void in between. Go figure

For the record, I am Venezuelan and do not see the Americans or Europeans as superior.
To say, however, that our governments are a model to anybody may be patriotic, but unfortunately very far away from the facts.

Good article . The actions by four European countries was indeed clumsy , but the reaction Latin countries was , to say the least , somewhat exaggerated . I wonder what they would have said if Snowden was indeed found on the plane . After all President Morales is known for unexpected remarks or actions .
With regard to the spying . Well , the article says it all - they all do it so why the fuss . In both cases just a grand opportunity to attack the USA . Which is normal for Mercosur and Alba countries . In all this we seem to forget that Snowden has broken the law and should be held accountable .

I take your point ,two wrongs do not make it right ! However one does feel that those countries who do the same made the most fuss about all this ! It is also worth noting that the leftward move in this area must be worrying for the USA and other democracies .

The machinery of the US Government is being used to make us the Global Super Cop, the neighborhood bully that everyone worldwide is expected to bow down to.

As Snowden has revealed, the real abuse is the black market sale to private corporations of personal information like your phone calls and e-mails, and very soon your medical and prescription records. The government is requiring these records to be digitized and centralized.

Millions of people log into Facebook/Google/Amazon/Twitter/LinkedIn and give away every tiny aspect of their life to these great corporations to pick a part, sell to the highest bidder, and then turn around and sell right back to you.

I'm not worried about the government. I'm worried about the millions of companies out there with access to my day to day habits, and probably know more about me through analytics and search/web data than any doctor or government. Because they do it without me knowing, right in front of my face, and then help other companies manipulate me into buying their products.

I can find creative ways to opt out of consumerism, while I am not able to opt out of having my paycheck go to corporate bailouts, factory farm subsidies, and insane "guns for criminals" (fast&furious) programs, along with the often covert funding and arming of dictators and thugs in cultures we're manipulated into fearing in the name of "defense". Corporate interests only control the government to the degree they do because we've allowed it to be sold, and laws (such as the Telecommunications act of 1996, Patriot act, NDAA, etc.) are put in place to continually erode our sovereignty.

When one is forced to provide material support for such unbridled corruption and greed, under threat of violence and imprisonment, I fail to see how this is something to not be worried about.

"Because they do it without me knowing, right in front of my face, and then help other companies manipulate me into buying their products. I'd welcome Big Brother before I'd welcome Big Corporation."

Well said, Christopher Gerber. My fear is Big Corporation is Big Brother, and Big Brother is Big Government. Overall, The USA is still the freest country on the face of the planet, but because of the NSA and the Patriot Act, our freedom is fading fast.

The USA, along with almost every country, adopted the UN's non-binding 30 point Bill of Rights in 1948. My Father taught me that there is some good in everything (even the UN). To restore protection of our privacy, perhaps we need to adopt the UN Bill of Rights Article 12, which guarantees the right to privacy. Most countries already have it in one form or another.

If Congress won't adopt it, we should start a state initiative to hold a Constitutional Convention that would make Article 12 a part of our own Constitution.

The UN's Article 12 says: "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks."

Whenever I see childish terms like "anti-Americanism", I have to question the motives and premises of the author. The article is one of many deflections away from fundamental issues of the morality and constitutionality of what has become the obscenely well-funded yet unchecked power of the executive branch.

One would think that media would have an easy job serving as something of a check on power, filling in the gaping hole left by a presently much-despised and self-serving congress, with a useless "secret court" judicial branch.

Corruption is as easy to find in the world as power, and it has always seemed odd at how easy it is to find US-based articles on how corrupt most other governments are, but outside of very specific parameters defined by the two main political parties, very little actual scrutinizing and digging takes place. If we want a coherent example of "antiamericanism", we should focus on the complacency of those who have the power and duty to be otherwise.

Unlike most here, I don't see this article necessarily as a defense of the US' spying program. But I will definitely agree there is no merit to arguments that attempt to discredit Latin American governments for offering asylum by pointing out hypocritical behavior. That argument amounts to "it is better to be consistent than to be correct," which is ridiculous on its face.

Smear campaigns against anyone who voices support for Edward Snowden in an attempt to sway popular opinion will simply not work this time. It holds no weight on the concept you choose to marginalize and ignore: the constitution of the United States is sovereign and all attempts to abuse and intentionally misinterpret legislation under the protection of confidentiality and the excuse of "public interest" is intolerable. The fact that the executive branch is proactively attempting to remove the judicial branch from weighing in on the legality of these practices simply alludes to the fact that they know what they are doing is, in fact, likely to be determined as illegal.

The civil rights record of the countries who have voiced support for Edward Snowden is irrelevant to the central issue of the affair: the Constitution of the United States requires that the seizure of Americans' private data occur only upon the issuance of a warrant, but all three branches of the Federal government have conspired to subvert that requirement. The criminals running our country operate outside the Law, and they must be treated as outlaws. The threat to our lives and liberties posed by our own President, Congress, and Judiciary far exceeds that of any foreign adversary, and, despite the suppression of the news by corporate media, patriots know them for the traitors they are.

The central issue for most of the world is that they are being spied upon. Just because your constitution apparently says (although I cannot find the exact sentence where it is said) that it is legal to spy on me (European) does not make me any happier.

The only response has to be a full-throated condemnation of the illegal hijacking of President Morales' aircraft by those odious European countries at the behest of their U.S. masters. Everything else is just bs.

I am disappointed, yet again, with The Economist. A corrupt US practice cannot be justified by wrong-doing elsewhere. The fact that other countries also engage in illegal surveillance does not render the United States' actions less abominable. The article should have shed a light on the illegality of spying according to international law, and measures that countries as well as the UN can bring about to curb it.

"I am disappointed, yet again, with The Economist. A corrupt US practice cannot be justified by wrong-doing elsewhere."

Sorry, but WHERE in the article did you read any sort of justification? I sure did not.

The Economist has already quite clearly and repeated stated that it thinks that Edward Snowden did the right thing. But that doesn`t change the fact that the only countries who at least pretend to want to help him are not excactly known for valuing human rights and free speech, to put it mildy.

But that is surely not Mr. Snowdens fault. The blame lies with the U.S. who look like they are bent on treating him like a traitor (which he is not)and the other democratic countries for shying away from taking a stance.